To be depressed that lockdown would happen again tomorrow if there was another new disease

I lived in a Tier 2 area just before one Christmas, all around was tier 4 and the queues at our shopping mall were huge, it was a ridiculous scenario, of course folks from the surrounding tier 4 counties were going to come to our shops.

Or lunatics who don’t care about people dying or protecting the vulnerable.

What we've never had before is something that most people would believe themselves to be realistically likely to die of, combined with modern communication methods allowing us to see exactly how bad things were getting all over the world. That is brand new, and the thought isn't a pleasant one.

I think people’s resentment to the very necessary lockdown was caused by events around it as much as lockdown itself.

The stupid petty rules like taping park benches, closing public tennis courts whilst allowing personal training and preventing loved one’s accompanying one another into hospital. These prevented very little spread but caused very real hardship.

And, of course the hypocrisy of allowing ‘necessary’ corporate entertaining and COVID parties dressed up as work events.

Finally, the government-sanctioned profiteering that no one has yet gone to jail for.

In addition, the messaging of ‘save the NHS’ was asinine. It was always about preserving a functioning medical system in order to save lives, not about saving the NHS per se, but that was poorly explained with the four word slogans.

I am assuming hopefully we will not see another pandemic in our lifetime but, if I’m wrong, we need a government leading with dignity, gravitas and self-sacrifice, the opposite of BJ and his shower.

Well they’re going to have to come up with better evidence for that if there’s a next time- as they well know.

Your prerogative. Personally I think it's quite silly to extrapolate from an off-the-cuff remark in the way you have done. I said precisely none of the above, you're just assuming I think it.

Exactly. Because there was so much focus on stupid, petty rules, like closing playgrounds, taping up park benches, police persecuting the coffee drinkers (and I still say that story was orchestrated, to make an example of how “powerful” the police could be): it was a race to the bottom, with Scotland and wales competing to impose the pettiest rules. It suited the government to have the public fighting over whether Easter eggs were allowed or not, or whether you were walking your dog more than once a day. And I haven’t forgotten “the government might have to kill your cats”. They would have had to have killed ME first.

There should have been much less focus on this, and much more about what the government was doing to get things moving. Less grovelling about deaths, and much more grovelling about the very real damage caused by prolonged lockdowns, instead of partying when they thought nobody was looking, and proving that they were ruining people’s lives in the full knowledge that the virus was not the mortal threat they were telling us it was. Because the government pledged “we will do whatever it takes to beat the virus”, and told the public that the virus was an extremely deadly threat, they painted themselves into a corner, and made it politically impossible to ease restrictions, because they had frightened the public so much. Their extremely damaging campaign of fear had worked too well. That’s one reason lockdowns dragged on, and on, and on.

Exactly. Because there was so much focus on stupid, petty rules, like closing playgrounds, taping up park benches, police persecuting the coffee drinkers (and I still say that story was orchestrated, to make an example of how “powerful” the police could be): it was a race to the bottom, with Scotland and wales competing to impose the pettiest rules. It suited the government to have the public fighting over whether Easter eggs were allowed or not, or whether you were walking your dog more than once a day. And I haven’t forgotten “the government might have to kill your cats”. They would have had to have killed ME first.

There should have been much less focus on this, and much more about what the government was doing to get things moving. Less grovelling about deaths, and much more grovelling about the very real damage caused by prolonged lockdowns, instead of partying when they thought nobody was looking, and proving that they were ruining people’s lives in the full knowledge that the virus was not the mortal threat they were telling us it was. Because the government pledged “we will do whatever it takes to beat the virus”, and told the public that the virus was an extremely deadly threat, they painted themselves into a corner, and made it politically impossible to ease restrictions, because they had frightened the public so much. Their extremely damaging campaign of fear had worked too well. That’s one reason lockdowns dragged on, and on, and on.

I think people’s resentment to the very necessary lockdown was caused by events around it as much as lockdown itself.

The stupid petty rules like taping park benches, closing public tennis courts whilst allowing personal training and preventing loved one’s accompanying one another into hospital. These prevented very little spread but caused very real hardship.

And, of course the hypocrisy of allowing ‘necessary’ corporate entertaining and COVID parties dressed up as work events.

Finally, the government-sanctioned profiteering that no one has yet gone to jail for.

In addition, the messaging of ‘save the NHS’ was asinine. It was always about preserving a functioning medical system in order to save lives, not about saving the NHS per se, but that was poorly explained with the four word slogans.

I am assuming hopefully we will not see another pandemic in our lifetime but, if I’m wrong, we need a government leading with dignity, gravitas and self-sacrifice, the opposite of BJ and his shower.

I agree entirely. It's absolute bullshit as a strategy but all you'll get on here is a bunch of lockdown lunatics who see no problem with economic meltdown.

There have only ever been two diseases with both high infectivity and case fatality rates; smallpox and bubonic plague (which is bacterial and responds to antibiotics).

So, while the odds of another pandemic are reasonable, it is likely to be controllable and for society to survive (unless deliberately engineered in a laboratory).

The worst in recent times was the Spanish Flu with
a case fatality rate of 2.5% and an R number of around 2.5. Strangely it mostly killed young healthy adults. Although communities self isolated, essential work continued (including fighting a war) and essential workers continued to work.

I’d rather get I’ll with something like Covid then my DCs development and mental health being damaged, yes. If it were a much more severe illness and affected kids much more then I would lockdown but apart from that I’ll take the illness.

Yep. The other issues would be healthcare workers turning up at all and essentials such as water or lights on.

It could probably be done idk really but it’s a different scenario to Covid

It was my opinion at the time that we didn't lockdown soon enough. And I stand by that even though its probably an unpopular one. There was too much dithering and the governement flipped from one course of action to another. We are incredibly lucky that the fatality rate wasn't higher. Then I think they let lockdowns drag on too long. Once we had a good idea of what covid was, how it would impact us, and we had hospitals ready to go then I believe they should have been lifted and only those most at risk should have been shielding.

Hopefully if and when it happens again the data on the impact on our children will be considered. But as others have said I dount so many will be compliant. There is so much anger on what we missed during that time, especially in light of the behaviour of some of those in the government at that time.

But the point is, you wouldn’t know if it was a novel virus. And the buggers keep mutating. Hence, we prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Also in a really catastrophic scenario, we wouldn’t be fucking about with bespoke Tesco orders, we’d be getting rations delivered. We might be using supermarkets as distribution centres but it wouldn't be like normal click and collect.

Absolutely - much more likely that people will refuse to go out rather than being forced to stay in. The old ‘I will NEVER lose my freedom again’ is nonsense.

Well, they're not going to be in public parks except maybe to try and hunt any wildfowl that happen to be hanging around. Or be one of the parties in a scapegoating massacre, perhaps. But there also wouldn't be anything to comply with in that situation, because that assumes a functioning government making and communicating laws. We wouldn't have one of those!

Which is why people keep saying, there's not much point talking about lockdowns in an apocalypse scenario because obviously society would just collapse. What's actually up in the air is what would happen with a milder but still dangerous virus.

I wouldn’t expect them to. I was a ‘key worker’ and would now absolutely refuse to go into work just to facilitate those who want to stick it to the man. That’s what I’ve taken from the last pandemic! Anyway, remove Tesco and change it for public park, if you prefer.

I think people’s resentment to the very necessary lockdown was caused by events around it as much as lockdown itself.

The stupid petty rules like taping park benches, closing public tennis courts whilst allowing personal training and preventing loved one’s accompanying one another into hospital. These prevented very little spread but caused very real hardship.

And, of course the hypocrisy of allowing ‘necessary’ corporate entertaining and COVID parties dressed up as work events.

Finally, the government-sanctioned profiteering that no one has yet gone to jail for.

In addition, the messaging of ‘save the NHS’ was asinine. It was always about preserving a functioning medical system in order to save lives, not about saving the NHS per se, but that was poorly explained with the four word slogans.

I am assuming hopefully we will not see another pandemic in our lifetime but, if I’m wrong, we need a government leading with dignity, gravitas and self-sacrifice, the opposite of BJ and his shower.

The point which has been made several times is, in this situation, it wouldn't be about complying with lockdown, but figuring out how society keeps functioning when people refuse to go to work.